PMDD and You

From my last post about medication for PMDD you may have guessed that I have strong views about drugs versus natural treatments. So I just wanted to write a post answering the question – is there a cure for PMDD, and if so how do you do it naturally?

First I want to discuss the idea of the word “cure”. It is easy to imagine curing a disease, or a virus. Once it is purged from the body it is gone completely (well mostly) and you will not suffer form it again unless you catch that disease or virus again. It is an outside influence on your body that can be eradicated from your internal systems making you feel a lot better and “cured”.

Curing a disorder like PMDD is a different kettle of fish though. There are many reasons for PMDD to occur but it all stems from a massive hormonal imbalance that disrupts mood regulators in the brain and has a knock on effect to many of the physical symptoms. If you control your hormones then the symptoms will disappear which will be like a cure … however if your hormones become unbalanced again then the symptoms will surely return as you are genetically predisposed to this eventuality.

So can you cure PMDD? If you mean get rid of the symptoms at the root cause and keep it that way – yes you can.

This requires a natural treatment for PMDD. This is not anything mystical, just a change in lifestyle choices and ways of thinking that act on your mind and body and emotions that all add together to form something that is much more powerful and long lasting than any drugs can ever be.

Some aspects of a PMDD natural holistic cure are:

• Dietary changes
• Stress reduction
• Sleep cycle adjustment
• Motivation
• Exercise
• Herbal and vitamin supplements

To find out more about how all of these can be done to eliminate PMDD from your life check out the PMDD Treatment Miracle which covers all of these things much more detail.

Medication for PMDD is what you will usually be faced with once a doctor has diagnosed you with this awful and life wrecking condition. Doctors are very quick to prescribe drugs to ease the symptoms of many disorders including PMDD. This I feel is a great disservice for the sufferers of many psychological and physical ailments because drugs typically mask the symptoms of ongoing conditions and do nothing to actually cure them.

This can be seen in the usual suspects that are given to PMDD suffering women such as:

• Birth Control Pills of various brands
• Hormone boosting pills – These do not balance your hormones but simply shove more in for a short term boost that might ease some symptoms.
• Anxiolytics (Anti-anxiety Drugs) – Xanax, Klonopin, Ativan and the like. These will give short term relief to sever anxiety without ever stopping it happening again
• Pain Relievers – Useful only if necessary to function but again to not bring lasting ease.
• Antidepressants – Drugs such as Zoloft, Paxil CR and others are often given to those suffering depression from PMDD. These again bring no lasting cure and have had some press about very bad side effects

Now this is not entirely the doctor’s fault. Doctors are extremely busy and must rely a lot on helping people as quickly as possible so they can see as many patients as possible so drugs can often seem like the best and quickest way to help. To explain more carefully the lifestyle changes that you must undertake would take some time, and often patients do not really listen and just want a one shot pill – a vicious cycle. Other reasons include that the doctors themselves are not well informed of PMDD, some doubt it existence even and think it is an over reaction to PMS which can be very humiliating for a women to hear.

So, the simple truth is that medication for PMDD can help with short term symptoms of the disorder but will never cure PMDD. In addition to this, some drugs come with some nasty side effects making medication for Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder a short term consideration compared to more natural and long term treatment methods.

There is a fine line between very bad PMS and full blown PMDD.  The same as there might be between someone with full depression, and those who are very down and low, but do not have enough problems from this set of symptoms to be classed as a mental disorder. All of these states are still problematic and you should take steps to normalise your hormones if you have PMDD or not anyway! To properly find out if you have PMDD though there are a set of symptoms in a certain time frame that you must have for doctors to be sure.

The following list of criteria is from the DSM-IV which is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition published by the American Psychiatric Association. At least five of these symptoms must be found in the last week of the menstrual cycle, and must start to ease within a few days of the start of bleeding. They must also be absent in the first week after menstruation and finally, at least one of the five symptoms must be one of the first  four symptoms of the list below.

• Very depressed mood, feelings of hopelessness, or thoughts of self doubt or even self hatred.
• Greatly increased anxiety, tension and panic – feeling on edge and hyped up.
• Feeling suddenly sad or tearful or having an increased sensitivity to rejection.
• Continued anger and irritability that leads to increased interpersonal conflicts.
• Decreased interest in usual activities (e.g. work, school, friends, hobbies).
• Difficulty in concentrating on even simple tasks.
• Marked lack of energy and lethargy.
• A large change in appetite by eating too much, or developing a  specific food craving.
• Sleping too much, or on the other end; insomnia.
• A feeling or sense of being overwhelmed and out of control of things
• Other physical symptoms, such as breast tenderness or swelling, headaches, joint or muscle pain, a sensation of bloating, or weight gain

Following this very specific set of criteria can deduce if you have what the experts call PMDD. However, if you are even close to this then you obviously have a painful problem whether it is PMDD or just very bad PMS doesn’t REALLY matter does it?

So if you have PMDD or not, but you need help – the answer is the same. You need to balance your hormones which will regulate your mood and ease the physical symptoms as well.

If you suffer from sever PMS/PMT then you might have been told or have wondered if you have PMDD or premenstrual dysphoric disorder; but you might be wondering just what IS PMDD?

This is not an uncommon question as PMDD has only been officially diagnosed as a real condition since 2007 despite it obviously being around for as long as women have existed! Why it was never given any real credit comes from the view that it was simply PMS perhaps, and that women with PMDD were just over reacting. Other reasons might be that the extreme mood swings were improperly diagnosed as depression, anxiety, or bipolar disorder. Whatever the reasons, PMDD is real and has a specific set of symptoms that goes beyond simple PMS.

PMDD has been described as PMS on steroids, and this can be largely true as the same reasons for the symptoms of PMS are the root cause of PMDD. Hormonal imbalance due to the menstrual cycle is at the heart of the issue, this hormonal imbalance causes many other problems in the body which result in the physical symptoms of PMDD, and the mood disorders that come from mood regulators in the brain not working optimally as a result of the hormonal shift.

However, not every woman has PMDD meaning that only a certain subset of women have this hormonal imbalance. This can come from a number of factors such as:

• Genetics
• Dietary factors
• Sleep and rest factors
• Stress
• And more

No one woman will have the same exact reasons for PMDD but as you can see, it comes from a large set of variables in a woman’s life.